Let us not be consumed with thoughts of revenge. Instead take up challenges and find solutions. The human spirit always triumphs, says REENA SINGH
We have turned out to be a nation of commentators on others’ misfortunes offering only opinions, never solutions. We are even quicker to chastise governments and with every social event, we eagerly take sides, with supporters and non-supporters pitched against each other. Twitter wars rage and Facebook posts spill out. For most of us, it makes for entertaining reading while trolls, depending on which political party is paying their monthly honorarium get even busier. Sometimes the posts are so hilarious that I am tempted to write to them trolls offering my editing services for a fee. Might as well use proper English in an easy-to-understand style, I say.
Never mind that aside. I know that even if I suggest such an action, I will be instantly trolled, myself, for who cares about English-speaking and writing skills any more?
Let me return now to the topic I had begun to write on: namely, what has happened to our humanity?
Remember the horrific action by the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan some months ago? We spoke about them for some weeks and then? Soon enough, events in Afghanistan became a forgotten story for most of us. So long as an international event is not happening in our backyards, should we be so taxed as to find solutions for rehabilitating Afghans?
Along came the Ukrainian war. Another horrific event that churned our consciousness. And as the weeks ticked by, we became less interested in the shellings and the bombings, knowing fully well that innocent people with no inclination in either politics or the Nato were the worst hit. For the ordinary mortal who is busy with the daily business of running his shop or working for a corporation is concerned more with earning his wages than taking sides on a political question.
Closer home, The Kashmir Files is rocking our nation. War cries rent the air, with no one thinking of what will happen if the country’s people actually go around killing or maiming an entire community. Logically, do you think the community who is being targeted will just sit back and watch people killing their families and destroying their livelihoods? Everyone will suffer in such a war built solely on hatred. As for the country’s fortunes, forget about it. Unrest and civil war never ever benefitted anyone.
So, wake up and rekindle your humanity. If there is so much concern about fighting for the Kashmiri Pandits, don’t at least raise your voices asking them to be sent back to their homeland without guaranteeing their safety. Various governments have failed in that endeavor in these past 32 years.
Instead, let civil society get together and set up trust funds all over the country. If the government has failed to rehabilitate the displaced Kashmiri Pandit community, let us, citizens, do it. If each of us donates an affordable sum rather than splurging on pizzas and chocolates, we can raise money to set up communities where they want to live now. Yes, we can’t wipe out their sufferings of 32 years, but going forward, we can at least know that within the next couple of years, the displaced community can pick up the threads of their life and move on.
The partition happened 75 years ago. When I was growing up in the ‘60s and the ‘70s, I don’t remember any hatred or bitterness in the communities that were affected. In fact, Muslim neighbours warned my grandparents of an angry mob heading towards their haveli and they left instantly with their children (among them, my father and uncles) with just the clothes they were wearing. My family was part of the partition upheaval, as were several other families around me.
Instead, they were busy picking up the threads of their lives and were busy getting back into mainstream society. Of course, they, too, like the Kashmir Pandits had lost almost everything. They too had stayed in refugee camps and had to find jobs. But they did it without getting their thoughts muddled with thoughts of revenge and hatred.
All spiritual gurus say that thoughts of revenge and hatred are self-defeating. Will it help matters if there is more bloodshed and more upheaval? Concentrate on the indomitable human spirit instead. Even among Kashmiri Pandits there were several who moved on and are now established personnel in the mainstream of Indian society. Just like their partition-affected brethren 75 years ago.
Reena Singh has more than 38 years’ experience in senior editorial positions in The Times of India (TOI) and Genpact. She was Deputy Editor with TOI’s spiritual newspaper, The Speaking Tree, where she spent nine years.
Failing to take challenges posed by history and finding adequate solutions to make course correction of injustices done to humanity, this as such has been the greatest plight of mankind, no one knows who is to be answerable for it!
All debates and discussions to this very end, from the parliament hall to deep down to the street has merely created a vertical split, this surely is the greatest plight at the cost of the ailing humanity.
Peace, amity, equality and justice, these sound good to every human being’s reason transcending all dichotomies based on allegiances based on religions, faiths and beliefs. But paradoxically enough, when these individuals become a part of the collective, this very faculty of reason gets subdued, mute and emasculated on the face of an enigmatic alibi of “collective rationality”.
This is how violence and hatred gets justified, this is how war and invasion gets rationalised. In this process the one who suffers is the very reasonable average man who lives with his neighbour in amity vouching for peace and yet as a man of the tribe he votes for the collective rationality acknowledging the commandments of his own tribe.
This is the harsh reality of our own deeply ingrained pathological mindset, systematically built and buttressed in the course of history. How to get over from it, this in itself is the greatest challenge of history.
No doubt, we are going through a big turbulence all over. Big players are playing their games of power dictating the definitions of justice on their own terms and creating a mad frenzy, the average man like you and me are the only reasonable ones vouching for peace, amity and justice.
Making an issue out of a non-issue and a non-issue into an issue…this as such is the business of the vested interests and in this way they take humanity on a ride.
Unless and until we restore reason as the ultimate guiding light, mankind will get deprived up genuine justice keeping itself time and again tainted by acts justifying them on the pretexts of its irrational rationalities.
Hopefully, mankind will be able to overcome this challenge, monumental though in terms of both, as hope as well as a challenge, we should undertake this challenge valiantly raising the mast of hope. Is there a way other than this ??
Everybody has started to talk about Pandits after this film was released. Even politicians who matter, elevated the courage & intellect of the maker, by declaring that “atlast someone brought the truth to light.”
Nodoubt what happened before 32 years in Kashmir was barbaric and tragic. But Kashmir remained a burning fire ball all the while.
Reenajee has explained nicely in the post about Kashmir’s status.
In independent India many communities were displaced in many states at different times. Some community has become target and they were forced to leave their birth place home and possessions.
The essence of Sanaatni, India has lost during the last 6- 7 decades of modernization. We have consistently lost all those virtues which were our exclusive essence and become more selfish, more insensitive, more indecent, more intolerant and in one word more inhuman.
We mostly lost our traditions, our family culture, our dress culture, our sensitivity & our morals.
In a way we progressed economically and upgraded our standard of living but ignored ethics that gave us the tag BHARATIYATA.
Universal Brotherhood was our identity. But now we are again mostly in our families, unable to enjoy life together as brothers.
This detoreation was gradual and many events happened during last 75 years of Independent India, where humanity cruelly failed.
Why only Pandits many other communities too were displaced.
Before only a few years a particular community were forced to leave their homes in a district of UP.
People fleded out of fear as Pandits left during 90. Governments are working. They are trying but it is we who have the responsibility.
I haven’t seen the film and maynot see atall. But the film initiated a fresh stirr, few using the film to their advantage while someother admonishing it.
That shall be forgotten soon. The film shall make crores(already generated huge reserve) and both the makers and self appointed adjudicators stop talking about the pandits and their hurt Oswaldjee! If they can donate substantial part of their huge income , one may believe their concern.
There is no meaning or sense in showing unforturent cruel acts of a section of people in cenema. Houses were burnt, women were molested, children men women have died. Blood soaked the pathway dried and shred colors.
Enlivening hurts shall give rise to fresh bleeding, encourage all those wrong things we have inculcated during Independent India.
So the film for me is another bollywood movie.
If Government can ensure rehabilitation & safety or find out some solution to erase a portion of the hurt of Pandit community we can conclude that humanity has not totally wiped out.
I liked the post. Written with a sense of responsibility and explaining issues in its right prospect. Actually i enjoyed reading a post written on a controversial subject so nicely. Thank you Reena jee!
Reena loved the read.
Very well written liked the positivity
You have summed up recent burning topics, reminding us to be more compassionate and understanding. Life goes on and such issues keep cropping up, so it is in our collective interest to cultivate even mindedness, empathy and peaceful outlook